Into Eternity
by Vi Co
Summary: A vignette that has turned into something more... Feedback is much appreciated.
1. Eternally

Into Eternity

The shells dropped a few hundred metres away, too far to do any serious damage, but closer than the last set had been.  Those who had cover ducked beneath it, too late.  It wouldn't have helped them if the aim had been precise.  But there was no arguing with the self-preservation instincts that took over in these situations.

He tried to keep watch for everyone.  He knew them by the shape of their black silhouettes against the lighter darkness of the sky.  Hopefully none would be missing.  Shrapnel was a danger, even at this distance from the landing shells.

Heads started to pop back up, trying to do what they could before the next round of shells came in and forced them to take cover again.  "Keep your heads down!" he yelled, motioning toward the ground.  Nothing would save them from a direct hit, but those weren't the only kind that could kill.

It was doubtful whether they could hear him over the shellfire, but they ducked anyway; it was the natural reaction.  Although they weren't yet in immediate danger from the barrage, the gunners were steadily closing in on their ever more precarious position.  The pause between shells was too long for mere reloading; the gunners were also re-aiming, better fixing the co-ordinates of the exposed position.

He noticed a figure slithering through the mud toward him.  The concussions of shells prevented the exchanging of recognition and covered any other sounds the person may have been making.  And in the darkness, lit only intermittently by the flashes of the explosions, it was nearly impossible to distinguish between friend and foe when they hugged the earth like that.  It was only when people exposed themselves that identifications could be made.  But no one in their right mind would expose themselves unnecessarily.

Nervously, his fingers ran down his side toward his hip, to where a holster would sit.  Although he wasn't wearing a holster and honestly couldn't remember the last time that he had worn one, it was a gesture trained into him.  Even the mere motion was enough to help calm his racing heart beat and slow his frantic breathing.

The shadowy figure froze, as did all of the others, as a bright flare lit the area.  They scarcely dared to breath lest the motion be enough for the gunners to pinpoint them and blow them all into eternity.  The flare sank slowly toward the ground, the light dimming finally.

He opened his eyes when the shelling resumed and he knew that the flare had burned itself out; it was too dangerous to be blinded in the darkness that descended in the aftermath of the brilliant flares, so a good soldier always closed their eyes to guard against it.  He had a companion; the mud-covered stranger had finally reached him.

"Doc," the stranger yelled over the booming guns, putting a hand on his shoulder to make the connection between the two of them.  Touch was really the only sense that could be trusted under shellfire.  Sight was treacherous in the darkness and the flashing lights; it could be negated in a moment with a sudden flare and the accompanying plunge back into darkness from light.  Sound was covered over by the whine of incoming shells and the explosions that followed, and it was said that it was the one that you didn't hear that would get you.

But he heard that one coming in.  He heard the pitch change as the heavy shell raced toward them from the heavens, unstoppable in its deadly trajectory.  He heard the breath catch loudly in his companion's throat as they made the near instantaneous mental calculations that told them this shell was not going to land a safe distance away.  He heard the half-whispered prayer that came to his own lips unbidden.

And he saw the flash of the explosion only a couple of dozen metres in front of them, where he knew men would be.  He saw the brilliant flash of light that meant instant death for the men unlucky enough to be within that lethal range.  He saw the dirt fly up, dark against the blackness of the starless sky.

Then he felt it come down, raining over them.  And he knew that he could trust it because he felt it.  He felt the dampness of the earth landing on his hands and his face and he knew that he was alive.  He knew that so long as he could feel the ground beneath him trembling from the fury of the impact and the soil showering down on him, he was still as safe as one could be under the circumstances.  Because you couldn't be safe if you were dead.

But there were others who felt.  And they did not feel the safety that he felt.  They felt the searing pain of white hot metal being driven through fragile flesh.  They felt their bones shatter and displace under force that human bodies were not meant to withstand.  They felt their lifeblood flowing smoothly from them despite the frantic efforts of anyone who could reach them.

They felt, but they turned from that sense to the others.  They looked at the ripped flesh and the broken bodies.  And they heard the rattling wheezes, the blood curdling screams, and the desperate prayers.  They tasted the salty tang of blood and tears.

And then they yelled, as all men did in those times, for the one man that they thought could help.  It was after that yell that they turned more quietly for other aid.  But first it was always, "Doc!"

*********************************************************************

He felt a hand on his shoulder and he started.  "Doc?" he heard again.

It was a question, not the desperate scream.  "Doc," the voice repeated, "is everything okay?"

A second passed before he had calmed enough to recognise where he was and who he was right now.  He wasn't the scared teenager that he had been during his first experience with shellfire, cowering in a trench and clutching at a rifle that he had taken from a dead man who would no longer need it.  He wasn't the terrified medic that he had been the second time, caught out in the open with the rest of his platoon.  This was the third time and he was sitting in Post-Op, dozing lightly at a patient's bedside.

"Everything's fine," he answered, stretching his arms above his head in a gesture of feigned nonchalance.  "I was just dreaming.  I'm sorry if I woke you; go back to sleep."

The shells were distant.  He was out of practice, but he placed them more than fifty kilometres from the camp, probably up at the front.  But the concussions were more than enough to trigger the memories of the previous times.  And there were far too many of those to remember.

It was easier to deal with if he broke it down.  That way he only had to remember three times.  He didn't need to reflect on every day of his year in Flanders.  He didn't need to recall his tour through the Low Countries and into Germany.  And he needed no help to think about this most recent time; he only had to open his eyes and unplug his ears.

He pushed himself to his feet, steadying himself for a moment on the frame of the bed beside him.  What he wouldn't give for the young body that had answered to his every command.  But he had given that in France, twice if he really wanted to think about it.

Scars criss-crossed his body, much like the scars that would now forever mark the boys that came beneath his scalpel on the operating tables.  They were from many things.  Shrapnel and bullets; barbed wire and broken glass; they were the wounds of an old soldier who had been through too much and had seen too much war.

These boys shouldn't have those scars, he reflected.  No one should have scars that go too deep to heal or to have to wake with their hearts a tempo of machine-gun fire that was only remembered too well.

Thinking of it was enough to make his anger rise.  Some of these boys here in this ward probably had fathers who fought alongside him in Flanders, whether the first or the second time.  It wasn't right that in the space of less than fifty years so much war had to tear at the world, threatening to rip it apart at the seams. 

But they weren't calling this a war.  This was a mere police action.  It sure felt like a war to him.  There was the shellfire, the blood, the wounded, and, yes, the dead.  To all but the most careful observer, it was a war.  And even that observer doubtlessly got confused from time to time.

There was a pause in the distant shelling.  "Gunners are re-aiming," he muttered beneath his breath.  "We'll have more casualties soon.  They can't bracket the positions forever."


	2. Incessantly

The door swung closed behind him and he was left watching dawn break softly over the torn landscape.  He sometimes wondered if dawn was the only gentle thing that remained with them on the battlefield.  But even dawn had been corrupted and taken hostage by the war.  It was a favourite time for attack.  That was why he saw so many dawns.  You didn't want to be asleep when the enemy hurtled over the parapets of their trenches and dashed across no-man's land toward you.  You didn't want to be unaware when they encircled your position and began closing the net around you and your company.  You couldn't doze when lines of wounded men stretched out into the compound, waiting for their chance under the scalpel.

Winter was setting in and the air was cold.  He could see the clouds of frost that formed in front of him with every breath.  The fatigue jacket he wore over his white scrubs wasn't enough protection from the weather and he wrapped his arms around himself as he walked slowly in the direction of his tent.  His leg was bothering him a little.  It was a reminder of his time in the trenches.  It always warned him when there was going to be snow or rain.

Hopefully he could catch a little sleep, real sleep, before he wandered over to the mess for breakfast.  Lately, as the front had moved ever closer to their position, he was sleeping only fitfully.  His dreams were haunted by memories of other times, the times that he had tried to hard to forget.  When he was asleep, he saw the faces of men that he would never see again in life.  He heard the voices and the sounds that he had spent yeas trying to silence.

But perhaps they were a warning.  When he awoke stifling his screams, he wouldn't attempt to go back to sleep.  He would go to Post-OP and start evaluating the patients, trying to decide which could be moved and how.  Then he would go back to his office and start drawing up plans for bugging out.  Most of the time the plans were unneeded, but they would always sit on his desk until the shooting moved further away and he was again able to sleep.

His wife had never understood his nightmares.  She couldn't, she had never survived through a living nightmare.  But she had been patient, waking him when he began to toss and turn, heading off the worst of them.  Now he was alone in his tent and had no one to save him from himself.  So his remembrances of Flanders blurred with his recollections of Germany and bled into his life in Korea.  When the front was too close and when shells were landing just outside the camp, the distinctions were no longer sharp and he saw things that he knew could not be.

The last time the shelling had been close, he thought that he had seen Billy Thompson, one of his trench-mates from the first war, laying flattened in the nearest crater.  He had been pressed down into the dirt as far as he could; only the top of his helmet protruded over the edge of the protective hollow.  It had taken a great deal of self-control to stop from yelling for Billy to keep down.  It wouldn't change what had happened.  The bullet that had pierced the top of that helmet and taken off the top of Billy's head had been fired forty years before.

Another time he had seen Joe Wilkins, fellow Charlie Company medic, bent over a patient in the compound, bandage scissors clutched beneath his teeth as he tied off the tourniquet around the wounded man's leg.  He had actually stepped away, the instructions for Joe to leave the soldier actually rising to his lips.  But it was too late.  The shell that had hit both Joe and the wounded man had been launched ten years ago.  And when Joe had lifted his head, it had turned out to be BJ, blonde moustache twitching in an expression of concern.

The visions of Korea hadn't come yet.  But he knew that when this war was over, if it was ever over, when a car backfired he would see Hawkeye dropping to the ground to escape sniper fire, when he watched the Fourth of July fireworks with his grandchildren, he would see the terror in Margaret's blue eyes, pleading over her surgical mask.  He knew that the events being burned into his mind now would rear up and begin to consume him, much as the others had.

*********************************************************************

"Halt!"

"Hold your horses," he said firmly, smiling at the guard, "it's just me on the way back from Post-OP."

"Sorry, sir," the guard stammered, lowering his rifle.  "I didn't know that it was you."  The kid was new, had only been with them for a few days.  This was probably his first time on guard duty at night and it was only natural that he be nervous.  He hadn't yet built up a tolerance for blood, and guns, and death.

"It's okay, son," he reassured the boy.  "You're doing a good job."

And then he was off, making his slow way toward his tent.  He only had a few hours before the camp would be stirring, long OR session or not.  There were patients to care for, and if the intensity of the distant shelling was any indication, more wounded to treat.  He made a mental note to have Radar requisition more supplies from HQ.  They wouldn't want to run short if the fighting was moving back toward them.  And the shelling could easily cut their supply lines if it started moving closer.

He had just reached the door to his tent when he heard footsteps hurrying in his direction.  "Sorry, sir," Radar said softly, "but we've got incoming wounded.  Four choppers and two busses coming in probably the next hour or so."

He sighed and turned, the door not yet even half open.  "Get on the horn and find out exactly—"

"Right, sir," Radar interrupted.  "I'll find out exactly how far away they are and then I'll put through that order for supplies you had me make up yesterday."

And then the young clerk was off, hurrying through the night, teddy bear still clutched beneath his arm.  He hesitated for a moment, debating whether or not to start preparing for the incoming wounded or to try and catch some sleep before they arrived.  The shellfire slowed its pace and he pushed open the door to his tent.  The shelling was getting progressively closer and the wounded that were coming were likely only the tip of the iceberg.  If he didn't take this opportunity to rest, he didn't know when he would get another.

He stretched out on his cot, not bothering to remove his clothes.  It wouldn't be long before he was forced to dress in them again.  And he had long ago grown used to going weeks without being able to change into clean clothing.  It was the curse of a combat soldier.  Clean clothes and warm food were two things that were like gifts from above, so much manna from heaven.

*********************************************************************

He had woken with warnings on his lips, half-shouted, and his heart pounding the rat-a-tat rhythm of an MG-42.  The mud and chaos of Flanders had bled into the screams and mayhem of Germany.  Those had turned into the blood and turmoil that made up his life.  He could hear the choppers coming in and the harsh crackle of the PA system as the surgeons and nurses were called back to their task.

The shelling had moved closer yet.  The Koreans must be making advances.  The front was falling back toward the hospital unit.  Hopefully the advance could be checked.  With this many wounded coming in and wounded from the last round still clogging Post-OP, it would be next to impossible to move everyone to an un-scouted temporary location.  And yet, there was that all too familiar feeling of fear that had settled in his gut.  It was not fear of death or of being wounded, those fears had been conquered long ago.  This was the unnamed fear that all combat soldiers carried with them that went beyond the mere fear of death or wounds.  It was a fear that encompassed it all.

He looked up at the leaden sky; the sun was hidden behind clouds that had moved in quickly after that grey dawn.  It still looked like snow.  "Radar!" he called in the direction of his office.  The boy hurried out, clipboard in hand.

"Yes, sir?" Radar asked, mind already trying to jump four steps ahead.

"Find out where the front is and what's going on out there," he directed.  "That shelling keeps getting closer; we're going to need to know if there's any chance that we're going to have to prove that the mobile part of MASH is true."

"You don't think that we'll have to bug out?" Radar asked, eyes round behind the lenses of his glasses.  "Do you?"

Even Radar didn't know about his plans and his worries.  At least, not unless that sixth sense could be used to figure out things like that.  "I just want to be sure," he answered, unwilling to share his fears.  A commanding officer was supposed to be all knowing and fearless.  Of course, that wasn't true and everyone knew it.  But it helped everyone if he continued to put on that façade.  And it perhaps helped him most of all.


	3. Unendingly

The blood pooled anywhere there was a depression in the ground; it was flowing too fast for the hard-packed dirt in the compound to absorb it all.  There would be time for that later, when the wounded no longer overflowed out of pre-OP.  But for now, it collected beneath the stretchers and ran in rivulets along the ground.

The four choppers and two busses had been hours ago, perhaps enough hours ago to count as days.  He wasn't quite sure anymore; he had lost count somewhere between his twelfth amputation and his second arterial graph.  But he knew that there had been uncountable soldiers on his table since then.  Their faces had blurred together until his was no longer sure of those, but he knew their wounds.  He knew their wounds all too intimately.

"Radar," he called, stretching his back a little as he waited for another patient to be brought to him.

"You called, colonel?" Radar said, quickly hurrying to his side, but keeping his gaze carefully averted from the patients.  The boy had seen enough blood and guts to last him for his entire life; he knew that Radar didn't want to see any more than he had to.  No one did, really.

"What'd you find out from HQ?" he asked.  The shelling had continued since before that first call to surgery.  It was difficult to gauge the distance from inside the noisy operating room, but, if anything, he would guess that it had come nearer.

"Our soldiers have been pulling back toward the 8063rd since yesterday," Radar reported.  "They can't hold the line.  Canadians are moving in from somewhere on our left, but they haven't made it all the way up yet."

He sighed.  "They haven't made it all the way up yet?" he repeated back to the clerk.  "What is Sam hill do they mean by that?"  He knew what they meant.  It meant that the dike was cracking.  The Canadians were desperately trying to plug the gap, but the North Koreans were leaking through anyway.  It was a leak that had the potential to become a flood, and they were all sitting in the way.

"Well, sir," Radar started.

"Get back on the phone and find out when the Canadians are supposed to be in place and how far they're expecting the front to move back this way," he ordered as Klinger slid another wounded soldier in front of him.

*********************************************************************

The shelling had definitely moved closer during the few hours that he had slept.  The flow of wounded hadn't ceased, even though the troops were retreating back toward another unit.  Unable to continue any longer, the surgeons and the nurses had been forced to start working in shifts.  There were only so many consecutive hours that they could pull shrapnel from soldiers and stitch them back together.

He staggered over to the mess tent, his muscles painfully reminding him that he was no longer as young as he used to be.  Plates of sandwiches were lined up, waiting for anyone with the energy to walk over and take one.  It had been impractical to serve real meals.  No one had the time to sit down and eat them.  And those that did have the time were too badly hurt.

A few of the tables had been converted into makeshift stations where personnel could donate blood.  Most of them had long since given all they were allowed.  Some had given more.  But every once in a while they would manage to stop a chopper pilot for long enough to sit him down, give him a cup of lukewarm coffee, and drain some of the vital fluid from him.  One of those pilots was sitting there now, chewing on something that may have been a sandwich, or, if you believed Hawkeye, the cup of coffee.

He waved briefly as he surveyed the sandwich selection.  They were all equally unappetising and he would have given almost anything for one of Mildred's chicken sandwiches on her fresh-baked bread.  He even would have settled for one of the corned beef numbers that he had gotten used to during the last wars.  But he wasn't overly sure what was before him, and he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to know.

He picked out a few and started on his way back to the operating room.  The wounded no longer spilled out into the compound; they were finally all contained within Pre-OP.  But they had come out the other end and temporary wards had been set up in the Officer's Club, the VIP tent, and they had just been moving in to convert Margaret's tent when he had gone to bed.  He would have to volunteer his tent next.  It was easier to move himself than to try and re-accommodate the others.

"Are you awake, sir?" Radar asked, coming up beside him.

He started, not having noticed the diminutive clerk.  "The last time I checked.  What was the latest from HQ?"

"The front's moved back almost four miles in our direction," Radar said, checking his clipboard for the numbers.  "The American right flank gave way about ten minutes ago, but we haven't been put on alert yet."  A shell burst noisily above them and Radar flinched.  "How far away do you think those shells are?"

He thought for a moment, listening to the next batch of incoming explosives.  "Far enough away that we don't have to worry about them yet," he said definitively a moment later.  They were far enough off that they wouldn't do any damage.  But they were getting closer.

Mentally, he began running scenarios.  They were overflowing with wounded that they didn't have a hope of transferring.  There were no vehicles to spare to send the nurses away, and with the more still to be treated and everyone running on almost no sleep, it would be hard to do send them anyway.  The front was moving ever closer toward them.

"What's the nearest unit to us?"

"Fighting troops or another MASH?" Radar asked, flipping pages on his clipboard.

He hesitated for a moment.  "Medical," he decided.

"The nearest MASH is the 4081st, but HQ mentioned something about there maybe being a Canadian unit between us," Radar rattled off quickly.  "I tried finding out more, but the lines heading nearer to the front are under heavy shellfire.  Sparky said that he'd keep trying for me."

"Nearer to the front?" he questioned, sitting up and starting to pull on his boots.  He wasn't going to be doing any more sleeping for a while, that much had quickly become apparent.

Radar shrugged.  "That's all that I could get out of their colonel before the line went dead."  Another round of shells whistled in, still coming progressively closer.

His mind instantly shifted to a higher gear.  This was a situation that called for a cool, level head, and his mind was racing as fast as it ever had.  "Get HQ on the horn and get them to divert any more incoming casualties to the 4081st.  If we need to bug out, we can't do it so long as there are still wounded coming in," he ordered, watching as Radar's eyes went as round as his glasses.

"And keep trying to get that Canadian unit," he added as the clerk scurried from the room.  He knew that if that the medical unit was going to retreat, they'd likely be headed right in their direction, their own wounded in tow as best they could manage.

*********************************************************************

"Four-oh silk," he demanded, squinting at the bloody mess that had once been a healthy boy.  The nurse hesitated.  "Silk," he repeated, trying not to get irritated.  The nurse was as exhausted as he was.

She pressed the needle into his hand.  "Sorry, sir," she apologized.  "But you'd better make that last because we're running short."

"Margaret," he called, scanning the OR for the head nurse.  She would know what they had left for supplies.  

"I think she's asleep," BJ responded.  "Either that or she's keeping an eye on Post-OP."

He couldn't help but be irritated at the way that things were shaping up.  The front was still inching its way back toward them, the shells were doing a fair imitation of a creeping barrage in their direction, they didn't seem to be getting close to the end of the wounded, and the Canadian unit was still incommunicado.  Not only that, but now they were running out of supplies, and Radar had just informed him that the 4081st was having radio problems.

"Anyone know when the last time someone took inventory was?" he asked, trying not to bark the question out.  He only received silence.  "For the love of Pete," he exclaimed, not able to stifle it.

            "Is there something that I can do to help, colonel?" Father Mulcahy asked, stepping uncertainly toward him.

            "You can use those connections of yours with the man upstairs," he replied.  "And while you're doing that, see if you can locate our missing head nurse."

            The priest nodded, blue eyes solemn above his white mask.  "If she's asleep should I wake her?"

He had to sigh.  They needed a supply inventory now, but Margaret had been on her feet just as long as any of the surgeons.  "No," he had to answer after a second to think.  "If she's asleep, you'd better let her sleep."  If the situation continued the way that it was, no one would have time to sleep later.  And as he had found out far too often, in too many other wars, people didn't make good decisions when they were pushed too far.

He'd be hard-pressed to say exactly how far too far was, but he'd be willing to hazard a good guess that they were all likely approaching that limit.


End file.
